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Military badlands too dangerous to sell

By ROB EDWARDS

SOME British military sites are so contaminated that they can never be sold
off, the Ministry of Defence admitted last week. As well as numerous firing
ranges littered with unexploded munitions, there are at least eight sites
thought to be polluted with radioactivity from the use of radium-based
luminous paint in the past, and at least one contaminated with mustard gas
left over from the First World War.

John Stuart, head of the MoD’s environmental unit, told an international
defence industry conference in Munich last week that some of these sites would
probably have to remain in the hands of the military. Firing ranges that had
been used for more than a few years would probably never be more than “99.9
per cent safe” because there was always a risk that a few unexploded weapons
might be overlooked. This would make the sites unsuitable for “many purposes”,
said Stuart.

“Inadequate information about the past use of sites or the presence of
contaminants could render sites unsaleable,” he said. “We have to acknowledge
that areas of our estate may never be disposed of because of the level of
contamination.” The MoD, which is currently considering which land to dispose
of as cuts in defence spending begin to bite, owns 3400 sites covering 242 000
hectares in Britain. Two-thirds of the sites are training grounds and firing
ranges.

Stuart disclosed a problem at Ditton Park, a 68-hectare site near Slough,
where there used to be a plant manufacturing compasses for the Royal Navy.
Until the 1960s, compass dials were coated with paint containing radium so
that they would be visible in the dark. A survey of the site last year found
radioactive contamination from radium residues “across a large part of the
land area”. Smart said that although it might not be advisable to eat the
soil, “it does not glow at night or anything like that”.

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Stuart said the disposal of a substantial quantity of contaminated soil was
“under discussion”. But the MoD was having difficulties trying to decide what
to do with it, he told New Scientist, particularly as British Nuclear Fuels
would be unlikely to welcome such a large volume of soil at its dump for low-
level waste at Drigg in Cumbria.

An MoD spokeswoman in London insisted that the levels of contamination
found at Ditton Park so far were “low” and did not present a health hazard
either on or near the site. She stressed that the MoD had made no decision on
whether it would be necessary to dispose of any soil. It was still assessing
the extent of the contamination.

A spokesman for the RAF said that there were seven military airfields being
considered for disposal where similar radioactive contamination could be
expected, four in England (Scampton in Lincolnshire, Swanton Morley in
Norfolk, Finningley near Doncaster, and Carlisle), one at Brawdy in Wales, one
in Germany (Laarbruch) and one in Hong Kong (Sek Kong). More than 25 years ago
instrument dials on planes at these bases were repeatedly painted with radium
under the laxer safety standards of the time.

Stuart also told the conference, which was organised by Deutsche Aerospace
and the American defence industry, about the Bramley training ground, near
Basingstoke. In 1918, the Admiralty used this 385-hectare site to dispose of
First World War munitions, including some containing mustard gas. “It is
believed civilian contractors, employed to deal with conventional weapons, did
not have the capability to destroy chemical warfare munitions and simply
buried them when their contract was due to expire,” he said.

The MoD’s London spokeswoman said that such behaviour had been “fairly
common practice”. A cache of munitions discovered during routine excavation
work at Bramley in 1988 was cleaned up in an operation codenamed “Apple”. The
rest of the site is now being examined for other potential hazards. She said
it was not possible to estimate how many other sites might be similarly
contaminated because the MoD is still trying to identify them.